Friday, August 07, 2015

KHOU on the HERO petition to relocate the Super Bowl

Boosters of big sporting events in Houston are nervous about the fight over the equal rights ordinance.

Opponents
of the ordinance have succeeded in putting the issue on the November
ballot. Now, some HERO supporters are calling upon the NFL to move the
2017 Super Bowl out of Houston if the ordinance is repealed. The online
petition was launched by a blogger and it has dozens of signatures.

The NFL reportedly considered moving a Super Bowl out of Arizona over
legislation that would've offered legal protections to businesses that
discriminated against gays. That never happened, because the governor
vetoed the bill.

HERO opponents say it'll never happen here either.

"That's
simply a red herring. That's simply what they tried to do in Indiana
and Arkansas and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act," said ordinance
opponent Jared Woodfill. "It basically shows that they are going to do
anything and everything they can to skew the issue."

"I think it's
a real threat," said KHOU 11 Political Analyst Bob Stein. "Now, how it
plays with the voters is very interesting. It could conceivably become
one in which voters have a backlash against it, see it as a -- how can I
say this? -- a threat."

Houston voters will go to the polls in a little less than three months, but it's already game on for the equal rights ordinance.